Preview — Das Wort für Welt ist Wald
by Ursula K. Le Guin

The Word for World Is Forest is a sf novel by Ursula K. Le Guin, published in '76, based on a '72 Hainish Cycle novella.

Centuries in the future, Terrans have established a logging colony & military base named "New Tahiti" on a tree-covered planet whose small, green-furred, big-eyed inhabitants have a culture centered on lucid dreaming. Terran greed spirals around nativThe Word for World Is Forest is a sf novel by Ursula K. Le Guin, published in '76, based on a '72 Hainish Cycle novella.

Centuries in the future, Terrans have established a logging colony & military base named "New Tahiti" on a tree-covered planet whose small, green-furred, big-eyed inhabitants have a culture centered on lucid dreaming. Terran greed spirals around native innocence & wisdom, overturning the ancient society.

Humans have learned interstellar travel from the Hainish (the origin-planet of all humanoid races, including Athsheans). Various planets have been expanding independently, but during the novel it's learned that the League of All Worlds has been formed. News arrives via an ansible, a new discovery. Previously they had been cut off, 27 light years from home.

The story occurs after The Dispossessed, where both the ansible & the League of Worlds are unrealised. Also well before Planet of Exile, where human settlers have learned to coexist. The 24th century has been suggested.

Terran colonists take over the planet locals call Athshe, meaning "forest," rather than "dirt," like their home planet Terra. They follow the 19th century model of colonization: felling trees, planting farms, digging mines & enslaving indigenous peoples. The natives are unequipped to comprehend this. They're a subsistence race who rely on the forests & have no cultural precedent for tyranny, slavery or war. The invaders take their land without resistance until one fatal act sets rebellion in motion & changes the people of both worlds forever....more

"Maybe after I die people will be as they were before I was born, and before you came. But I do not think they will."

In every book by Le Guin there is that special something for me, something that grabs a firm hold of my mind and heart and stubbornly hangs on, refusing to let go, burrowing deeply, growing roots, sprouting shoots that will go on to quietly, unobtrusively, almost imperceptibly change my mental landscape forever - by making me really think, by challenging established ideas, preco

"Maybe after I die people will be as they were before I was born, and before you came. But I do not think they will."

In every book by Le Guin there is that special something for me, something that grabs a firm hold of my mind and heart and stubbornly hangs on, refusing to let go, burrowing deeply, growing roots, sprouting shoots that will go on to quietly, unobtrusively, almost imperceptibly change my mental landscape forever - by making me really think, by challenging established ideas, preconceptions and expectations with unexpected quiet subversive subtlety.

"But even the most unmissionary soul, unless he pretend he has no emotions, is sometimes faced with a choice between commission and omission. “What are they doing?” abruptly becomes, “What are we doing?” and then, “What must I do?”

The idea, the storyline Le Guin uses is not new; in fact, it appears to be as old a human nature itself - just like that scene in the beginning of Kubrick's 'Space Odyssey', when proto-us make the definite step on the road from ape to human by learning how to use tools as weapons of murder.

Throughout ages, we have fought to prove that we are stronger - ergo better - than whoever happens to be *Them*, scarring our history with bloodshed, hatred, exploitation, dehumanization, prejudice, murder. After all, strongest survive, as evolution postulates. Isn't that true?

"You know the people you’re studying are going to get plowed under, and probably wiped out. It’s the way things are. It’s human nature, and you must know you can’t change that."

No, Le Guin's premise is not new, and, of course, she's not the first one to see the injustice ingrained in it. We find ways to justify the advantage of brute strength - be it of a human or an entire nation - but, feeling bad about it somewhere deep in the human core, feeling the appeal of the idea of justice, we also root for the underdog, the oppressed, the seemingly weak, and we hope that 'payback is a bitch'.

"But you must not pretend to have reasons to kill one another. Murder has no reason."

And so we think we know how this story will go, right from the opening pages of this short book, the pages that seem to forgo the subtlety and go straight for the divide between Good and Evil. The Evil being the technologically superior ruthless Earthlings carelessly and brutally exploiting the resources and the inhabitants of a lushly green planet known as the Forest to its people. The Good being 'the natives', the seemingly harmless, attuned to their environment and themselves helpless race of humanoid Ewoks, immersed in the culture based on nature and dreaming. The inevitable clash between the 'native' Selver and the 'outsider' batshit-insane macho Davidson should represent this struggle, and we know that the underdog should win, and humans should be taught a lesson in the nature of true humanity, and that the life on the planet should continue in the lovely ways that recover from human influence and proceed to prosper in the satisfying feel-good way.

"[...] and above all Athshe, which meant the Forest, and the World. So Earth, Terra, meant both the soil and the planet, two meanings and one. But to the Athsheans soil, ground, earth was not that to which the dead return and by which the living live: the substance of their world was not earth, but forest. Terran man was clay, red dust. Athshean man was branch and root."

But this is Le Guin writing, with her sharp mind and a knack for anthropology, and the understanding that the present world hinges on political negotiations much more than the idea of justice. She knows that the epic showdown and the happily-ever-after may look good on page and screen, but in reality there are scars that do not heal, and that the reaction to every action does not just go away after it has served its purpose, that most victories are Pyrrhic and that things can never be the same as though nothing had happened - because it did happen, after all.

Because in order to protect themselves and their way of life the Athsenians in Le Guin's novella had to go against their nature itself, to change, to adapt - and therefore never be able to return to the hopeful "it can be now as it was before". Because change cannot be undone. Because cruelty and hatred begets same.

"But had he learned to kill his fellowmen among his own dreams of outrage and bereavement, or from the undreamed-of-actions of the strangers? Was he speaking his own language, or was he speaking Captain Davidson’s?"

Le Guin's book was written in the heyday of the Vietnam war, and it's easy to see the parallels to it reading about Americans in battle machines fighting people in the forest. But it's just as easy to see parallels to the more mundane events that are present in our everyday lives. The questions periodically raised in the media about what's more important: preserving the livelihood of the farmers or saving a rare species of beetles? Ensuring livable wages to people in sweatshops overseas or cheap running shoes to the consumers in the Western world? Preserving delicate marine life systems or cheap oil drilling to ensure current wellbeing of people needing the fuel?

And let's not forget the age-old and completely wrong paradigm of "If you're not with us, you're against us!" and the appalling idea of patriotism as hating the Other, so aptly summarized by quite caricaturish and terrifying in his self-righteous madness Davidson: "See, where we differ is that with you Earth doesn’t come first, actually. With me it does."

This story is unmistakably a 'Le Guin', with its anthropologically-themed musings, impeccable and original world-building, the marring of the lines between good and evil, the greyness between black and white, the emphasis taken away from the action and to the politics, the belief in the role of the government in ensuring the semblance of peace and order, with its somewhat dry and cerebral language occasionally permeated by the descriptions so brilliantly vivid it's breathtaking. And just like every book by Le Guin I've read so far, I'll recommend it to all my friends without hesitation.

"Maybe after I die people will be as they were before I was born, and before you came. But I do not think they will."

“If it’s all the rest of us who are killed by the suicide, it’s himself who the murderer kills”

So muses author Ursula K. LeGuin in her 1972 novel The Word for World is Forest. The winner of both the Hugo and Nebula Awards for best novella, LeGuin’s mastery of the language and the genre are in full display as well as her remarkable imaginative powers.

Revisiting her “Hainish” cycle of works (not a series of books but rather a group of stand alone works with a thematic central core – somewhat simi“If it’s all the rest of us who are killed by the suicide, it’s himself who the murderer kills”

So muses author Ursula K. LeGuin in her 1972 novel The Word for World is Forest. The winner of both the Hugo and Nebula Awards for best novella, LeGuin’s mastery of the language and the genre are in full display as well as her remarkable imaginative powers.

Revisiting her “Hainish” cycle of works (not a series of books but rather a group of stand alone works with a thematic central core – somewhat similar to Heinlein’s Future History or Poul Anderson’s Poletechnic Series, though I am unaware of any reoccurring characters in LeGuin’s Hainish Cycle), the author sets this work on a small planet inhabited by short, green furred humanoids who, though technologically backward, are spiritually and evolutionarily more advanced than the visiting, conquering and destroying Terran colonists.

I cannot read the novel without forming a mental comparison to the 1953 short story Piper in the Woods: A Short Science Fiction Novel by Philip K. Dick. LeGuin has crafted a world where the humans (as the natives are no doubt descended from a common Hainish ancestor as all humans are in her Hain narratives) are so spiritually connected to the forest of their world that they cannot separate abstract thought away from the woods. Further, the natives are able to manifest and relate more fully to their dreams and LeGuin borrows a “dream state” awareness reminiscent of aboriginal Australian concepts. The novel suggests an anthropological study and a broadened metaphor for LeGuin to observe and provide comment upon her fellow man.

Most noteworthy is LeGuin’s first person perspective of one of the Terran colonists – Captain Davidson. A villain of Dickensian evil, LeGuin portrays this characterization as adeptly as John Steinbeck did when he described car salesmen in The Grapes of Wrath. This element of the novel is also akin to Norman Mailer’s murky observations in Why Are We in Vietnam? and perhaps both share a troublingly inevitable comment on our baser nature.

Bradburyesque in its lyrical beauty, this is nonetheless a violent and disturbing novel. Though the natives are small, green furred and naturally peaceful, they have been pushed to extremes and have themselves found an atavistic internal brute. Observant readers of classic science fiction have noticed that director and producer James Cameron borrowed shamelessly from Poul Anderson’s themes in his short story Call me Joe, and Cameron may also have adapted themes from LeGuin’s outstanding work.

In all honesty, the basic premise of this novella is the one I've read/seen many times before both in fiction (the latest version is James Cameron's "Avatar") and reality.

A group of evil and greedy Terrans is in a process of colonizing a new planet - Athshe. What it means, as you can guess, is that Terrans destroy Athshe's ecosystem by cutting down the planet's forests and sending wood to their mother planet Earth (which by this time is nothing but a barren desert) and enslave and abuse the natIn all honesty, the basic premise of this novella is the one I've read/seen many times before both in fiction (the latest version is James Cameron's "Avatar") and reality.

A group of evil and greedy Terrans is in a process of colonizing a new planet - Athshe. What it means, as you can guess, is that Terrans destroy Athshe's ecosystem by cutting down the planet's forests and sending wood to their mother planet Earth (which by this time is nothing but a barren desert) and enslave and abuse the native people who they consider to be imbecilic animals but choose to rape their females anyway. What's more is that through their heinous actions, Terrans affect the psyche of the whole planet's population, forcing the people to react to the invaders' atrocities in a way that is foreign to their inherently non-violent nature.

But of course, Ursula K. Le Guin, a great writer that she is, creates a completely unique and meaningful tale using this age-old story. As always, her world-building is impeccable. I am always amazed at how imaginative Le Guin is - there is no stone unturned, she creates an entirely original system of culture, social order, ecology, physiology, language, and thought process. The result is a remarkable work of science fiction firmly grounded in brutal reality of our past and present. ...more

Good short books are profitable reads, therefore great ones are greatly profitable. I am thinking of the time invested in reading the entire book and the pleasure, inspiration or education gained from them. This book clocks in at 189 pages but Le Guin made every word count.

Like most of Ms. Le Guin's works this is a thought provoking story. What happen when we introduce evil into a hitherto innocent and passive culture? The Athsheans are very vivid creations, the story of their enslavement and eGood short books are profitable reads, therefore great ones are greatly profitable. I am thinking of the time invested in reading the entire book and the pleasure, inspiration or education gained from them. This book clocks in at 189 pages but Le Guin made every word count.

Like most of Ms. Le Guin's works this is a thought provoking story. What happen when we introduce evil into a hitherto innocent and passive culture? The Athsheans are very vivid creations, the story of their enslavement and exploitation by humans is heartfelt and all too believable. Real life examples of man's inhumanity to man is plentiful, what would we do (or not do) if we encounter a less advanced and weaker alien race? I shudder to think of it. I suspect the movie Avatar is inspired by this book because of the similarities in the main theme. Le Guin's story is much more sophisticated of course.

This is the third Le Guin book I have read this year (2011), the other two being The Dispossessed: An Ambiguous Utopia and The Left Hand of Darkness. Of the three The Word for World is Forest is my favorite. A book of this quality at this length ought to be read by everyone.

Note: If you are in the mood for short but great sci-fi novels have a look at this for plenty of suggestions (and do join us at PrintSF for sf books discussions)....more

A strange little green furry face with huge black eyes comes slowly into view. The creature is an ATHSHEAN, by the name of SELVER. He seems somewhat puzzled, and prods LJUBOV with the butt end of a spear. The anthropologist groans; this frightens the stubby ball of green fuzz and SELVER prods him again. LJUBOV sits up and stares at the three-foot-high Athshean. He tries to figureHainish Wars: Episode VIReturn of the Anthropologist*

67 EXT. FOREST CLEARING – TOWN OF ENDTOR - LJUBOV'S CRASH SITE 67

A strange little green furry face with huge black eyes comes slowly into view. The creature is an ATHSHEAN, by the name of SELVER. He seems somewhat puzzled, and prods LJUBOV with the butt end of a spear. The anthropologist groans; this frightens the stubby ball of green fuzz and SELVER prods him again. LJUBOV sits up and stares at the three-foot-high Athshean. He tries to figure out where he is and what has happened. His clothes are torn; he's bruised and dishevelled.

The Athshean jumps up and holds the four-foot-long spear in a defensive position. LJUBOV watches him as he circles warily and begins poking him with the butt of the spear.

LJUBOV Cut it out!

He stands up, and the Athshean quickly backs away.

LJUBOV I'm not gonna hurt you, Selver. I came to help.

LJUBOV looks around at the dense forest, and at the charred remains of his hopper, then sits down, with a sigh, on a fallen log.

He puts his head in his hands to rub away some of the soreness from his crash. He looks over at the watchful little Athshean and pats the log beside him.

LJUBOV Well, maybe you can help me. Come on, sit down.

SELVER holds his spear up warily and growls at him like a puppy.

LJUBOV pats the log again.

LJUBOV I promise I won't hurt you. Now come here.

More chirps and squeaks from the little green creature.

LJUBOV All right. You want something to eat?

He takes a scrap of food out of his pocket and offers it to him.

SELVER takes a step backward, then cocks his head and moves cautiously toward LJUBOV, chattering in his sing-song Athshean language.

LJUBOV That's right. Come on. Hmmm?

Sniffing the food curiously, the Athshean comes toward LJUBOV and sits on the log beside him. He takes off his helmet, and the little creature jumps back, startled again. He runs along the log, pointing his spear and chattering a blue streak. LJUBOV holds out the helmet to him.

Reassured, SELVER lowers his spear and climbs back on the log, coming to investigate the helmet. Suddenly his ears perk up and he begins to sniff the air. He looks around warily, whispering some warning to LJUBOV.

LJUBOV What is it?

Suddenly a bullet slams into a log next to LJUBOV. LJUBOV and SELVER both roll backwards off the log, hiding behind it. LJUBOV holds his own pistol ready, while SELVER disappears underneath the log. Another shot, and still no sight of anyone in the forest. Then LJUBOV senses something and turns to find CAPTAIN DAVIDSON standing over him with his weapon pointed at his head. He reaches out his hand for LJUBOV’s weapon.

DAVIDSON Freeze! Come on, get up, LJUBOV!

He hands the weapon over as a second man emerges from the foliage in front of the log.

DAVIDSON Go get your ride and take him back to base.

MAN #2 Yes, sir.

The second man starts toward his hopper, as SELVER, crouched under the log, extends his spear and hits DAVIDSON on the leg.

DAVIDSON jumps and lets out an epithet, and looks down at SELVER, puzzled. LJUBOV grabs a branch and knocks him out. He dives for his pistol, and the second man, now climbing into his hopper tries to close the hatch. LJUBOV fires away and hits the hopper’s gasline causing it to explode.

The forest is quiet once more.

SELVER pokes his fuzzy head up from behind the log and regards LJUBOV with a confused expression. He mumbles something in Athshean. LJUBOV hurries over, looking around all the time, and motions the fuzzy little creature into the dense foliage.

LJUBOV Come on, let's get outta here.

As they move into the foliage, SELVER takes the lead. He sings and tugs at LJUBOV to follow him.

**freely adapted from scene 67 of Return of the Jedi, with a surprising minimum of alterations. Lucas must have had this book in mind when he created the Ewoks. The similarities, which go far beyond this imagined scene (and include such things as a town called "Endtor" on a forest planet), are too numerous to be coincedence....more

Great book by a great writer. If you've not yet read any Ursula K. Le Guin, then start with this book. If you've only read a couple by Le Guin and are wondering what next to sample, follow up with this book next.

I've only read two other titles by Le Guin, but I wish I had started here first. Le Guin's work is dense and requires some work on the part of the reader, but this book (actually just a novella) is far more accessible and serves as a great introduction to themes and concepts used in herGreat book by a great writer. If you've not yet read any Ursula K. Le Guin, then start with this book. If you've only read a couple by Le Guin and are wondering what next to sample, follow up with this book next.

I've only read two other titles by Le Guin, but I wish I had started here first. Le Guin's work is dense and requires some work on the part of the reader, but this book (actually just a novella) is far more accessible and serves as a great introduction to themes and concepts used in her other works. (For example, I was a teenager when I read The Dispossessed and The Left Hand of Darkness, and years later was shamed to admit I hadn't truly grasped what an ansible truly was - I came across the term in wikipedia and finally learned what I was supposed to have understood when I tackled those novels as a youngster. But here, in this book, it would have been all very clear what an ansible is used for. And the concept of the ansible is so simple, so imagine what else I missed. I regret not starting here first.)

If you've seen the movie Avatar, then you know the basic premise that this book explores, but the book (brief novella that it is) still should be read even though you can easily predict how events will transpire.

And I really found the first 4-5 pages fascinating, compelling and enlightening. Read them again looking for snide and subtly sarcastic attitudes that would rankle the indignation of anybody not in the "old boys club" (read: women, subjugated races, etc). It's a man's world (in fact a privileged man's world), isn't it, says the author, and here's the prevailing mindset behind those wanting to keep it that way.

Since I sat, polite, but wanting desperately to excuse myself from the spilt paint, methodical cacophony of clumsy dialogue, garish colors, interludes of mind numbing dead air, segueing into blindingly confusing scenes of (horrible) video game action, and a story that was told to death 70 years ago by people who had had so much passion for the worlds they were creating. A film which quite literally created a world with $300,000,000 worth of CGI, horrifically failing to trump the real juice… ...Since I sat, polite, but wanting desperately to excuse myself from the spilt paint, methodical cacophony of clumsy dialogue, garish colors, interludes of mind numbing dead air, segueing into blindingly confusing scenes of (horrible) video game action, and a story that was told to death 70 years ago by people who had had so much passion for the worlds they were creating. A film which quite literally created a world with $300,000,000 worth of CGI, horrifically failing to trump the real juice… ... "Avatar" it has been driving me nuts what book he, James Cameron had (dreadfully) ripped off; a book I loved in my teens, but could not remember the tittle of. Found it in the closet yesterday and this is it.I guess in all fairness he poached the hell out of "Nausicaa of the Vally of the Wind" as well.I do have to credit Avatar with getting me to reread this amazing book.

P.S. Avatar is the only Cameron film I have disliked and that includes "Piranha 2: The Spawning....more

I've come to regard Ursula K. Le Guin very highly and think she's become one of my favourite authors. Her stories are beautiful and deep and always touch me in a way that is hard to describe. For any who've yet to pick up one of her novels, I can't recommend her work enough.

The different perspectives given in this story are so contrary and the light it sheds so illuminating. The conflict is unavoidable and the reactions are sometimes so misguided but always completely believable.

One of the thinI've come to regard Ursula K. Le Guin very highly and think she's become one of my favourite authors. Her stories are beautiful and deep and always touch me in a way that is hard to describe. For any who've yet to pick up one of her novels, I can't recommend her work enough.

The different perspectives given in this story are so contrary and the light it sheds so illuminating. The conflict is unavoidable and the reactions are sometimes so misguided but always completely believable.

One of the things I love most about this series is that you don't have to read them in order. My first (and thus far favourite) was The Dispossessed, but I believe you can read these books in any order. As I said earlier, can't recommend them enough!...more

My friend Josh described this as the book James Cameron ripped off to make Avatar, to which I replied, "Can you really rip off imperialist guilt? Also, hello, dragons." While I stand by both of those assertions, Cameron clearly lifted heavily from this book, so, ok Josh, you at least half win. Like basically all suckers for the Pocahontas trope, though, Cameron failed to grasp the central irony of said trope, namely that it redeems the oppressor while continuing to rob the oppressed of their ageMy friend Josh described this as the book James Cameron ripped off to make Avatar, to which I replied, "Can you really rip off imperialist guilt? Also, hello, dragons." While I stand by both of those assertions, Cameron clearly lifted heavily from this book, so, ok Josh, you at least half win. Like basically all suckers for the Pocahontas trope, though, Cameron failed to grasp the central irony of said trope, namely that it redeems the oppressor while continuing to rob the oppressed of their agency. Le Guin TOTALLY grasps it, and throws it out the window with the ruthless abruptness of Willem Defoe in The Grand Budapest Hotel (yes, I *could* have embedded that animated GIF, but I didn't. It's called tact, kids (I kid, kids (or do I?))). Selver isn't a foil for Lyubov's heroic change of mind. He's a driven, focused leader with difficult decisions to make and a troubled conscience, and Lyubov is a well-meaning but pitiful and largely impotent side character. Neither is Selver some kind of atavistic vengeance avatar letting us indulge in a self-righteousness / pornoviolence twofer. While this story is a pretty straightforward alteration to the Pocahontas myth with some kind of vague dreamy stuff mixed in, it's one of the few such stories that seems to get the stakes (rape, murder, genocide) and the morality (we're guilty and there is no quick path to redemption, just the slow erosion of time) right (District 9 is the only other one that's coming to mind).

Related: is there a better name for the "Pocahontas Myth" as I'm using it here, i.e. oppressor infiltrates the oppressed, gains their trust, sympathizes with them, and leads them to successfully revolt against his former oppressor allies? There are so many stories like this, but I can't think of a conventional name, or even find one on http://tvtropes.org, where they appear to list every trope BUT this one. What's the oldest use of this trope? Is there one that predates the 1960s, or one that even predates European colonialism? Somehow I don't see Genghis Khan staying up at night reading about the lone Mongol that helped overthrow the Mongols.

CarolinaI think the usual name of the trope is "white saviour"--to the point where I'm accustomed to seeing it used even when the member of the oppressing claI think the usual name of the trope is "white saviour"--to the point where I'm accustomed to seeing it used even when the member of the oppressing class who infiltrates, becomes the hero of the resistance, etc is not literally white....more
Jan 30, 2015 11:28PM

This here’s another book-club read. Because I didn’t pick it, I came into this short novel with almost no expectations, which is always a nice way to begin a book; for when you have no expectations, everything good tastes sweeter, and everything bad less bitter.

Le Guin’s little parable was a pleasant surprise. She is a fine writer, especially when she is describing scenery. Her prose is not workmanlike, but generally well crafted. I also found it pleasant that she switched her narrator’s perspecThis here’s another book-club read. Because I didn’t pick it, I came into this short novel with almost no expectations, which is always a nice way to begin a book; for when you have no expectations, everything good tastes sweeter, and everything bad less bitter.

Le Guin’s little parable was a pleasant surprise. She is a fine writer, especially when she is describing scenery. Her prose is not workmanlike, but generally well crafted. I also found it pleasant that she switched her narrator’s perspective every chapter; her change in tone, in style, and in word choice effectively captured this shifting viewpoint. Well done.

I haven’t read many science fiction writers—hardly any, really—but one thing I notice is that they tend to be bad at dialogue and characterization, and good and building worlds and creating interesting plots. Le Guin doesn’t quite fall into this pattern. To the contrary, I thought the world-building in this novel was minimal verging on nonexistent. Though the plot involves an extra-terrestrial world and an alien race, the world is so Earth-like, and the aliens so similar to stereotypical Native Americans, that the story could easily have taken place here on our familiar floating rock.

Le Guin also breaks this tendency by creating some interesting characters. Her protagonist Raj Lyubov I found particularly compelling and complex. On the other hand, I found Captain Davidson, the villain, both ludicrous and dull. Le Guin gives Davidson every ugly quality: he’s sexist, racist, cocky, sadistic, and murderous. I admit, there are some interesting touches that prevent Davidson from being a comic-book bad guy; but in general he’s been left in the oven too long: all the savor has been burnt out of him, leaving only an ashy crisp.

One way that Le Guin does, unfortunately, fall into the pattern is that she is inept at writing dialogue. Characters speak in this kind of information-laden, stuffy speech commonly found in bad movies. One character points: “What’s that, Jim?” “Oh that? I’m glad you asked.” And Jim explains for the audience everything there is to know about a rocket that will play an important role later on. (That isn’t from this book, but you get the idea.) It’s a transparent storytelling device, not at all charming. Even worse is Le Guin’s dialogue of the Athsheans, which I can’t resist quoting:

The runner stood up, bowed her head to Ebor Dendap, and spoke her message: “I come from Trethat. My words come from Sorbron Deva, before that from sailors of the Strait, before that from Broter in Sornol. They are for the hearing of all Cadast but they are to be spoken to the man called Selver who was born of the Ash in Eshreth. Here are the words: There are new giants in the great city of the giants in Sornol, and many of these new ones are females. The yellow ship of fire goes up and down at the place that was called Peha.”

To call that heavy-handed is an insult to human hands. A black bear could do a more delicate job.

As many have noted, this book is didactic. Le Guin gives us parable of Western folly: the selfish white man comes in, chops down all the trees, destroys the natives, all out of greed and bloodlust. Thankfully, the novel is brief enough to prevent this from becoming overbearing; Le Guin was wise to keep this book short. Even so, there were some things I thought poorly handled.

The main problem, for me, was that the Athsheans commit greater atrocities than the colonizing humans. Yes, the humans are certainly vile: they come and enslave the native population in order to strip the landscape bare. Yet the humans do reform. After they are attacked and lose 200 men, they don't retaliate. To the contrary, they release all their slaves and issue orders to only use their weapons in self-defense. For a bunch of greedy colonists, this shows a remarkable amount of restraint. If something similar happened today, the result would be war. On the other hand, the counter-attacks of the Athsheans are brutal. They wipe out whole camps, killing everybody, even going so far as to kill all the human females, who weren’t in any way responsible for the colonists’ crimes.

In itself, I don’t think this was a bad move on Le Guin’s part. She could have shown how violent colonizing can lead to a cycle of violence, turning the victim into a monster. But she backs away from this. She still tries to keep the Athsheans pure and simple, even though they have just committed a mass slaughter of civilians. I admit that she does hint at this darker theme, adding a light touch of moral ambiguity; but it's not nearly enough to give shading to this black and white sketch.

There are some more things I could critique; a few sentences here and there were marred, the pacing was a bit erratic. But in general, despite all the above-mentioned flaws, I still quite enjoyed reading this book. The flaws were easy to overlook, and the aftertaste is pleasing enough to make me want to read more of Le Guin in the future. Manny said her novel, The Dispossessed, changed his life. High praise!...more

Much as I'm in agreement with this book's message of environmentalism and nonviolence, I found its delivery of that message to be preachy, joyless, and heavy-handed. Its tale of colonist humans and their conflict with the native Athsheans transplants the worst atrocities of colonialism's past into the future, but loses any subtlety and nuance in the process.

It doesn't help that the Athsheans embody just about every romanticized stereotype of the native primitive. Like the most Disneyfied take onMuch as I'm in agreement with this book's message of environmentalism and nonviolence, I found its delivery of that message to be preachy, joyless, and heavy-handed. Its tale of colonist humans and their conflict with the native Athsheans transplants the worst atrocities of colonialism's past into the future, but loses any subtlety and nuance in the process.

It doesn't help that the Athsheans embody just about every romanticized stereotype of the native primitive. Like the most Disneyfied take on Native Americans, they live amongst the trees, perfectly in balance with nature. They're deeply spiritual, with a strong, aboriginal-like connection to the dream time. And, in the book's most groan-inducing conceit, they're completely peaceful, never having even conceived of murder until it's introduced to them by humans.

The humans, on the other hand, exemplify the worst habits of colonialism to a degree that strains believability. Despite the fact that the Athsheans have learned English, only one scientist, Lyubov, sees them as intelligent beings with a worthwhile culture. The rest of the colonists treat them with disdain and virulent racism, casually beating, enslaving, and raping them (or turning a blind, indifferent eye to those who do). This never really makes sense; the humans complain that the Athsheans aren't any good as slaves (or anything else that they use them for), and the Athsheans themselves would happily avoid the humans if left to their own devices. The only apparent motivation the humans have for enslaving the Atsheans is spite.

As polarized as the characters' views are, Le Guin does a skillful job of getting inside the head of each. Still, though she fleshes them out well and makes them believable, they're not particularly engaging or likable. Lyubov, the lone Athshean sympathizer, is weak and ineffectual; he never comes up with a course of action more ambitious than bemoaning his own impotence. The Athshean Sleverin is too remote, too much of an exoticized native to be relatable. And Davidson, the human antagonist, is an abhorrent embodiment of arrogant machismo and genocidal hatred. They're effective characters for driving the plot forward, but none of them are particularly enjoyable to spend time with.

The lens of science fiction can put history in a fresh new perspective, letting us see past and present injustices in new contexts free from our preconceived notions. In the case of The Word for World is Forest, however, the science fiction setting brings precious little new insight or perspective into the sordid history of colonialism; fictionalizing events merely allows Le Guin to reduce both sides to their most polarized extremes. It's a testament to her skills that despite the lack of relatable characters and a plot that marches inexorably toward the conclusion dictated by its allegorical nature, the story is still thoroughly readable and moves along at a snappy pace. I look forward to reading more of Le Guin's work, and seeing her bring her formidable talents to bear on a more worthy tale....more

Tor recently re-released the Hugo winner The Word for World is Forest by Ursula K. Le Guin in a lovely paperback edition, so I thought it finally was time to check out this famous short novel, originally published in the seventies.

The novel is part of Le Guin’s famous HAINISH CYCLE (see also, among others, The Left Hand of Darkness and The Dispossessed) but can be read completely separately, although being familiar with the larger story will give you a better understanding of the broader contextTor recently re-released the Hugo winner The Word for World is Forest by Ursula K. Le Guin in a lovely paperback edition, so I thought it finally was time to check out this famous short novel, originally published in the seventies.

The novel is part of Le Guin’s famous HAINISH CYCLE (see also, among others, The Left Hand of Darkness and The Dispossessed) but can be read completely separately, although being familiar with the larger story will give you a better understanding of the broader context and some of the technologies, such as NAFAL and the famous ansible. Earth-based humans have established a logging colony on the world of New Tahiti and are actively exploiting the pristine world and the indigenous humanoid population, called “creechies” by their human slave-masters but originally called Athsheans. They are a mystical and peaceful-seeming species that lives in harmony with its forest-covered world and practices lucid dreaming, but when the vastly outnumbered humans push them too far, a surprisingly strong and occasionally brutal resistance begins...

Ursula K. Le Guin packs a lot of depth into this short, elegant novel. The contrast between the two opposing world views couldn’t be more clear, but there are also nuances within each culture, most noticeably on the human side with some characters that are more aware of the Athsheans’ cultural identity, and others who treat them as little more than animals or slaves. Selver, the Athshean protagonist, is a complex, fascinating character who I’d love to have seen in a longer novel. By contrast, the human Davidson is so predictable and flat that he barely rises above the level of a caricature; other human characters luckily show more complexity.

Much has been made of the parallels that can be drawn between the James Cameron movie Avatar and this novel, and it’s true that there are some notable plot similarities — which may also explain the timing of this re-release. It’s probably no coincidence that humans are on New Tahiti to gather wood (now Unobtain-, sorry, unavailable on Earth). On the other hand, the whole Noble Savage theme and stories of cruelty by colonizers to indigenous people were really nothing new even in the Seventies. Still, The Word for World is Forest is maybe the most famous example of this type of Romantic Primitivism in science fiction, so it’s easy to see why there were comparisons with Avatar.

Thematically, The World for World is Forest is a child of its time. Just compare the treatment and place of women in the Athshean and human cultures for Ursula K. Le Guin’s subtle feminist message. The colonization/oppressor theme was also highly relevant for the period. In case you’re not familiar with the HAINISH CYCLE, there are layers upon layers of colonization in The Word for World is Forest, because in the overall history of this SF universe, the inhabitants of the planet Hain originally colonized many planets hundreds of thousands of years ago, including the planet Earth, and it’s indicated that the Athsheans themselves may be derived from this original stock, too. Who is a colonizer, who is an oppressor, and who has the right to tell whom what to do, are all questions that come up again and again, but have no easy answers in this novel. These are themes that have been done many times, but rarely so succinctly and elegantly.

If you’re not familiar with Ursula K. Le Guin’s science fiction yet, The Word for World is Forest is probably not the ideal place to start, but on the other hand, its relatively short length makes it a good opportunity to get your feet wet and try one of the genre’s most talented authors. This subtle, short novel is deceptively simple, but sure to keep you pondering it long after you’ve turned the final page.Four Ways to Forgiveness

Once I got over the feeling that I was reading the book version of the film "Avatar" I came to rather enjoy this short novel.

I've long been a fan of her work but haven't read any of her books for a while and so took a long time coming to this. Pretty much knowing the plot in advance I was worried that it would be overly didactic. Indeed, the author's own introduction warned me that this would be the case. So well armed with this expectation I gritted my teeth and got stuck in and consequently diOnce I got over the feeling that I was reading the book version of the film "Avatar" I came to rather enjoy this short novel.

I've long been a fan of her work but haven't read any of her books for a while and so took a long time coming to this. Pretty much knowing the plot in advance I was worried that it would be overly didactic. Indeed, the author's own introduction warned me that this would be the case. So well armed with this expectation I gritted my teeth and got stuck in and consequently didn't find it too bad. I mean, yes, her point is rammed home pretty heavily. The antagonist is a almost a caricature for the type of person Le Guin obviously despises and you can't really miss the message however a shallow a reader you might be but the story is well told though and has brevity so it is a pleasure and a breeze to read. I read it on one day.

I've always enjoyed her writing style and this was no exception. I would recommend this to anyone who is a fan of her work or even as an introduction to her writing....more

I first came across this title via Wayne Barlowe's Barlowe's Guide to Extraterrestrials; and when I was at the library this last time around, I said to myself: How can you have gotten this far without reading any Ursula K. Le Guin? those short stories just aren't going to cut it, you know! But when they didn't have A Wizard of Earthsea, I decided to go for this one. Mostly because it was short. (And I figured: Why not sneak in another book to put me two ahead of pace for this year's goal? [1I first came across this title via Wayne Barlowe's Barlowe's Guide to Extraterrestrials; and when I was at the library this last time around, I said to myself: How can you have gotten this far without reading any Ursula K. Le Guin? those short stories just aren't going to cut it, you know! But when they didn't have A Wizard of Earthsea, I decided to go for this one. Mostly because it was short. (And I figured: Why not sneak in another book to put me two ahead of pace for this year's goal? [1])

What le Guin gives us with The Word for World is Forest is a pretty straightforward piece of (arguably) first-contact [2] sci-fi with strong ecological themes and some feminist undertones. The ecological themes are not subtle: a mono-climatic planet with "peaceful primitive" forest-dwelling natives? forced into slave labor by a colonizing human race that's just there for the lumber? But with fewer than 200 pages in this title, who has time for subtlety? Le Guin hits you with the point early and runs you over with it.

The feminist themes are a little more subtle.

Overall, an enjoyable book — and though it had some moments of outstanding prose, the not-so-subtle plot sometimes translated into some not-so-subtle wordsmithery. I've enjoyed le Guin's short stories in the past though, so I'll be back for ...Earthsea and others, I'm sure.

[2] : I say "arguably" first-contact because (1) the first contact aspect is not the central theme — that would be the ecological stuff — and (2) because if this is a "first contact" story, it is only implied. I say it is only implied because the text is peppered with these oblique references to how the Athsheans have had no concept of murder prior to encountering human-kind etc. — but never "knowing murder" is different than never knowing another species. And none of the Athshean characters ever comes out and says that the humans ("yumans") are the first ever to come. And all this world-time/dream-time stuff is another oblique hat-tip to cyclical history, which just further undermines any definitive claims to this being "first contact". And this is to say nothing of the directed panspermia theory referenced in the narrative....more

This is a story with a familiar theme. I see a lot of people comparing this to Avatar, looking at the reviews. This is Ursula Le Guin, so it's better than Avatar, though not as flashy. The writing is not Le Guin's best, in my opinion, but it's still clear and expressive, and lyrical. The story is not new, and I get the impression from the reviews that it was very political and topical at the time it was written -- not a context I share in, so I can't comment on that. Le Guin isn't so shallow a wThis is a story with a familiar theme. I see a lot of people comparing this to Avatar, looking at the reviews. This is Ursula Le Guin, so it's better than Avatar, though not as flashy. The writing is not Le Guin's best, in my opinion, but it's still clear and expressive, and lyrical. The story is not new, and I get the impression from the reviews that it was very political and topical at the time it was written -- not a context I share in, so I can't comment on that. Le Guin isn't so shallow a writer that her politics become utterly irrelevant in so short a space of time, though, and the book still has thoughts to offer.

The thing that struck me most, reading it, was how quickly she sketches out the world. This is basically only a novella, so it's not as painstakingly drawn a world as, say, Earthsea, but there's still detail there, even just in the way that Davidson refers to people. Not necessarily overt detail, but implied. I love it.

Not my favourite of Le Guin's work, but interesting and worth a read if you're a fan....more

This is a novella about the devastation a human colony wreaks on a forested world and its inhabitants, and how the inhabitants must fight back despite their habitual peacefulness -- written by a U.S. author during the U.S.'s participation in the Vietnam War.

... You see why it might be heavy-handed.

The story is told from three alternating perspectives. We open with Captain Davidson, a macho human-chauvinist, the author of many outrPart evocative and subtle, part heavy-handed but still compelling.

This is a novella about the devastation a human colony wreaks on a forested world and its inhabitants, and how the inhabitants must fight back despite their habitual peacefulness -- written by a U.S. author during the U.S.'s participation in the Vietnam War.

... You see why it might be heavy-handed.

The story is told from three alternating perspectives. We open with Captain Davidson, a macho human-chauvinist, the author of many outrages against the Althsheans, whom he calls "creechies." Then, Selver, an Althshean man and Dreamer, whose story we take up shortly after he has led an attack on human camp that will change everything forever. The third perspective is that of Raj Luyubov, sole human anthropologist attached to the colony and, it seems, the only human in the colony who really takes the colony's responsibilities to the Althsheans seriously.

The Selver chapters, and the parts of Luyubov's where we learn more about the Althsheans, are interesting for the Althshean worldbuilding. LeGuin doesn't go into great detail, but there are some very thought-provoking tidbits: what the Althsheans mean when they say "god"; how they perceive the act of dreaming; what it means to live on a world that is either forest or ocean.

I get the sense that some of the worldbuilding from the human side of things happened in other of LeGuin's books. The Word for World Is Forest is part of the Hainish Cycle, which I haven't read any more of. For example, the characters here learn briefly about the ansible (LeGuin coined this word), which is new technology at the time. But I think the uses of the ansible and the League of Worlds that seems to have been created at about the same time are explained more fully in other Hainish books. Still, the information in The Word for World Is Forest was mostly enough for the story.

I was going to write "One thing I would sort of have liked an explanation for was Captain Davidson's character," but then I realized something.

I'm often frustrated by the way a lot of science fiction (usually from the 70s and earlier but sometimes later) portrays a future world that has changed from the world of the author in so many imaginative ways -- except in terms of, say, gender roles. There's a single world government and FTL travel and everyone eats scientifically-designed bean-paste for breakfast instead of bacon and eggs -- but all the women are still housewives, sex workers, or secretaries!

I was about to try to explain why I'm not frustrated with Captain Davidson's character in quite the same way, even though he's a man of the future who's succeeded so far in his career by being a misogynistic, chauvinist so-and-so. Then I figured out what really gets me about the above type of scifi: not that sexism still exists in the future, but that the authors who write it that way so often don't perceive it to be a problem.

It's normal to have only male primary characters because if you had a female protagonist whatever would she do apart from fall in love; that would never drive the plot! Of course two men have conflict over a woman, or a woman's sexual jealousy leads her into treachery, or the male drive to conquer women sexually is a perfectly self-explanatory analogy for the need to colonize the stars. These things are so normal that apart from a few self-satisfied rhetorical sighs about human nature, one needn't explain or even draw attention to them. So these authors seem to think.

So one of the reasons I love James Tiptree, Jr. and Joanna Russ and Marion Zimmer Bradley's Renunciates is that they're writing the same situation except truthfully: their stories say "here's a universe full of wonders, and the men do and see everything first while the women are only sex objects, and that's the problem with us. Captain Davidson thinks he symbolizes the driving force of human colonization, but actually he's exactly what's wrong with it.

The story of the Althsheans in The Word for World Is Forest is the story of a people who are just realizing that in saving themselves from death by human colonization, they have changed themselves deeply. Like any major change, its touch is light, its harbingers are easy to miss amid the shock of more immediate events, an outsider (Luyubov) might be able to perceive it more clearly, but some of the wise can grasp what is happening.

And now I think the story of the humans in The Word for World Is Forest is also a story of this kind of change.

At the beginning Captain Davidson -- perfect embodiment of accepting and glorifying chauvinism -- is the microcosm of the human colony. He's not in charge, but everything's run in the way he approves of, with only enough dissent to make him feel like he's working for it. And then, just as Captain Davidson's attention is suddenly taken up by the unexpected-to-him revolt of his creechies, a ship appears, bearing humanoid representatives from the new League of Worlds, and an ansible. Davidson thinks of these arrivals as irrelevant, a distraction from the real problems of government and military action at hand, but to his frustration they bring new orders -- a stricter hands-off-the-natives policy. How is he supposed to work for the greater good of humanity like that? He'll have to do something...

The Luyubov chapters explain to some degree what is wrong with the military attitude to Althshea, and why it must change. But nobody listens to Luyubov. It's the Captain Davidson chapters where we see the vast weight of human nature slowly beginning to tilt on its axis. Only occasionally does the necessity of change arise clear and logical out of careful thought and research. To the rest of us, it comes incoherently, bubbling up from the murky depths of complacency, fear, hatred, denial, resistance, and ignorance.

I think it would be very rewarding to reread The Word for World Is Forest, paying attention to the Althshean and human response to the vague perception of vast, inevitable change.

-----

I've been comparing this book to feminist scifi, in which what's wrong with the world is often specifically misogyny. Captain Davidson is definitely a misogynist, and the human colony is definitely sexist (all the soldiers and colonists are men; at the very beginning of the book, a ship has just brought in a group of women who are meant to be wives and sex workers on the colony), but sexism is one thing that the novella does not discuss explicitly. Even Luyubov seems (from brief evidence) to be something of a male chauvinist, although he has accurately observed how different the Althsheans' gender roles are. Instead, it's implied that sexism and sexual violence are part of the larger problem (all embodied in Captain Davidson) that also manifests itself in colonization against the will of the original inhabitants, racism, violence, and destruction of the natural environment.

The term "kyriarchy" wasn't coined until twenty years after this novella's publication, but The Word for World Is Forest has some very good examples of it.

I said that racism is part of the problem here, and I didn't mean just human racism against the Althsheans. (According to the background science, which I think is explained more fully elsewhere in the Hainish Cycle, humans from Earth, Althsheans, and people from other planets are all descended from the same people who were long ago placed on their respective planets by another ancient people. The humans who understand and believe this tend to regard all of these peoples as different types of humans, and so I think they would call prejudice against Althsheans racism. However, Captain Davidson doesn't believe in this theory; he thinks of the Althsheans as non-human aliens, so I think from his perspective it's really xenophobia. Anyway.) Unlike many stories in which racism is metaphorically condemned by showing the evil of human oppression of a gentle alien race, the humans themselves in this novella are not all or mostly white. In fact, I think that apart from Captain Davidson, there's only one other white character with a name. (I'm not quite sure about Raj Luyubov -- since he's mostly referred to by last name only, I kept thinking of him as ethnically Eastern European, but at one point Davidson thinks derogatorily about "hindis" and I think he is including Luyubov.) According to Davidson's racial theory, Europeans and Africans are better men than Asians, since they come from the "cradle of humanity"; part of his mistrust of his superiors, once he starts getting orders to leave the Althsheans alone, has to do with how many of them are of Asian descent. This includes the head of the colony, Colonel Dongh, who uses the history of his own people to explain why it would be foolish to try to win a war against the Althsheans in their own forest....more

I'm still not sure what I think of this book, and am giving it only three stars in an attempt at impartiality.

It has the now-classic plot of Big Bad Colonialist American-Types cutting down trees and persecuting the peace-loving natives *cough*Avatar*cough*Fern Gully*cough*. For all that it's an actually nuanced and compelling story.

Unfortunately to get to the compelling nuances, you have to get through the first thirty pages, which are narrated by the over-the-top imperialist misogynist patriotI'm still not sure what I think of this book, and am giving it only three stars in an attempt at impartiality.

It has the now-classic plot of Big Bad Colonialist American-Types cutting down trees and persecuting the peace-loving natives *cough*Avatar*cough*Fern Gully*cough*. For all that it's an actually nuanced and compelling story.

Unfortunately to get to the compelling nuances, you have to get through the first thirty pages, which are narrated by the over-the-top imperialist misogynist patriot capitalist cowboy character Davidson, and is really almost unreadable. I sincerely believe that there are Davidsons in the world and I understand structurally why she created the character and chose to begin the novel with him, but in these just barely more enlightened times, he feels like a one-dimensional strawman. Perhaps he was an acceptable character in 1970, but now there's nothing surprising or enlightening about him.

This is definitely social issue science fiction (which is why Le Guin writes the colonial humans as coming right out of 70s America, without very much having changed in the intervening few hundred years), but even with that as a given, the human narrative felt generally preachy (well, except Lyubov's scenes - I really did like Lyubov).

On the other hand, I loved Le Guin's depiction of the complex, subtle forest and the Athsheans who belong to it; I thought her parable of violence was very powerful. I'm not sure if it would have been feasible to tell the story only from the Athshean perspective, but I might have liked it better if she'd attempted it....more

The Word for World Is Forest is an unusual addition to the Gollancz SF Masterworks series, yet a terrific one.

Being little more than 100 pages (and that includes a three-page Introduction by Ken MacLeod and a six page Introduction by the author herself) it was the winner of the Hugo Award in 1973 for Best Novella.

Despite its brevity, it is a masterclass in the case of the adage that sometimes ‘less is more’. Like Fritz Leiber’s equally brief Award-winning novella The Big Time (won in 1958 and reThe Word for World Is Forest is an unusual addition to the Gollancz SF Masterworks series, yet a terrific one.

Being little more than 100 pages (and that includes a three-page Introduction by Ken MacLeod and a six page Introduction by the author herself) it was the winner of the Hugo Award in 1973 for Best Novella.

Despite its brevity, it is a masterclass in the case of the adage that sometimes ‘less is more’. Like Fritz Leiber’s equally brief Award-winning novella The Big Time (won in 1958 and reviewed HERE), Forest does not outstay its welcome. It makes its point, leaves an imaginative impression and then leaves.

The plot is thus, to quote the back of the book:

‘When the inhabitants of a peaceful world are conquered by the bloodthirsty yumens, their existence is irrevocably altered. Forced into servitude, the Athsheans find themselves at the mercy of their brutal masters.

Desperation causes the Athsheans, led by Selver, to retaliate against their captors, abandoning their strictures against violence. But in defending their lives, they have endangered the very foundations of their society. For every blow against the invaders is a blow to the humanity of the Athsheans. And once the killing starts, there is no turning back.’

It is often said that, despite what some may think, SF is less about ‘the future’ and more about being a mirror for the times in which it was written. Forest also bears this point heavily, resonant in themes and images that LeGuin has herself said were influenced by the Vietnam War. It is ‘MESSAGE SF’, very didactic and clearly designed to propose a particular viewpoint. Not everyone will agree with its point of view, which can be summarised as ‘war bad, colonization bad (for the original inhabitants), nature good’.

On reading the tale forty years or so onward, I find that the ideas and the message is still there, and still comes across pretty well. Those of you familiar with James Cameron’s film Avatar will also recognise similar themes. Forest is about the horrors of war compressed into emotionless drudgery. On a wider scale it is about the age-long process of colonisation and conquest, whilst at the same time dealing with the need to co-exist with nature and the loss of innocence, personal cultural and social. Though set in the future, there’s a lot here we should recognise.

Of the eight chapters we get initially a succession of viewpoints: Captain Don Davidson, the NAFAL commander, Selver the Athshean (aka creechie) native leader, and Raj Lyubov the human (referred to as yuman here.)

Captain Davidson is perhaps the least subtle of the main protagonists. Brutal and bullish, he thinks more about ‘testing out’ the newly arrived Colony Brides and Recreation Staff (referred to as ‘buxom beddable breasty little figures’), than about the local natives. As expected, the reader is not meant to relate in a positive way to the militaristic aspect of the plot.

By contrast, Selmer is calmer and seemingly more implacable as befitting the representative of the local nature-loving Athshean race. He finds himself reflecting and acting on the natives’ very different viewpoint of the world, dealing with much of their days through some form of lucid dreaming, rather reminiscent to me of the Australian Aboriginal Dreamtime. When forced to take action against the yumans Selmer becomes a god-like intermediary between the natives and the invading Earth people.

The bridging character between the Human military and the alien Athshean is Raj Lyubov, yuman anthropologist (naturally) who is part of the military and yet spends his time trying to understand the local lifestyle and culture. To the invading force the natives are lazy, dumb, spaced-out aliens who do not feel pain, but the chapters here about the natives show us something deeper and more appropriately cosmic. It is Lyubov who discovers that the Athsheans are not lazy but actually are more complex than even humans can imagine.

In the meantime, a starship arrives bringing an ansible (an instantaneous communication device) intended for another nearby world. Through this they learn that there is now a “League of All Worlds” and that Terran colonial policies have changed. Instructions are issued to free the Athshean slaves and generally moderate the policies.

Rather predictably, Davidson refuses to believe the new instructions, believing that they are false. His further response is to organise a raid on a nearby Athshean tree-city to show the natives who is in charge. (Avatar fans, take note.) When Davison abuses and rapes local natives, it is Lyubov who saves them, although Selmer’s wife dies as a result of injuries sustained from Davidson.

When pushed to defend their people and their world, the Athsheans react very violently. The Athsheans respond by raiding and overrunning the main Terran base.

The revolution upends the Athshean culture but succeeds in ending Terran domination. For the atrocities he has committed, Davidson is exiled to an island where he is given food and medicine but no human contact for the rest of his life. The surviving humans return home on the next ship to arrive.

The story is pretty straightforward. Related no doubt to real-world events, from Korea to Vietnam, but possibly going back to events such as the treatment of Native Americans in the US in the nineteenth century, the skill of the writer is to present this tale in as entertaining a way as possible. To do this here Le Guin gives these characters very different voices, with each word crafted to have meaning. There is no padding, no bloated scenes here. The tale does what it has to do with never a wasted word, and some of the descriptions of violence have a greater effect by being kept to a minimum.

At one level The Word for World is Forest is a straightforward tale told well. However some readers will appreciate that it is also part of a much bigger picture, being part of Ursula’s Hainish Cycle of novels, which include The Dispossessed (also in this Masterworks series) and The Left Hand of Darkness. There are hints of this wider picture throughout – we have mention of an ansible that is mentioned in other Hainish stories. It’s also mentioned that one of the reasons for the yumans being on ‘New Tahiti’ is to provide exhausted resources on Earth as part of the Human expansion at the beginning of the series. Interstellar travel for the people of Earth has been made possible by technology from Hain. Though The Word For World is Forest is just one aspect of one small part of the galaxy-spanning collection of tales, I liked the fact that it was clearly one part of a Future History.

I can’t help feeling that part of the story’s popularity at the time was that it was originally published as part of the New Wave of the 1960’s and 70’s. In fact, its original publication was in the designed-to-shock story collection edited by Harlan Ellison, Again Dangerous Visions! * Forest is perhaps a reaction to what was going on in the Vietnam War and it struck a resonant chord with readers – or at least Hugo voters. LeGuin’s anthropologist background helps highlight the cultural impact of a sudden change to a society when the invaders come.

In summary, The Word for World is Forest is a gem of a read that even now, years after its original publication has retained its powerful message over the years. It will stay with you after you have read it.

I am hoping that this is the start of something good, as UK publishers Gollancz are in the process of a big re-release of old and new work by Ursula, now 85. The Word for World is Forest makes me look forward to more of these.

*(Just to give you an idea of the flavour of the rest of the collection, if you haven’t already read it, other stories there include ‘Stoned Counsel’ by H. H. Hollis and ‘The Big Space F*ck’ by Kurt Vonnegut.)...more

LeGuin's prose shines, her worlds are balanced and fantastic and sad, she neither flinches from nor condemns the human condition. Every time I return to her I feel like I'm drinking from some wise, secret well.

Much of the book's descriptive attitude parallels James C Scott's notions of legibility and metis in SEEING LIKE A STATE. Anthropology is the common ancestor, of course, but I wonder about the proper genealogy of these ideas.

Perhaps seeking to build on the success of the movie Avatar, Tor has re-released Ursula LeGuin’s Hugo-winning classic, “The Word for World Is Forest” (Tor, $11.99, 189 pages). The reason? There’s an invasion of a distant planet by humans, a planet that already holds a less-advanced civilization, at least technologically speaking.

LeGuin has said that “The Word for World Is Forest” was greatly influenced by the Vietnam War (the novella upon which it is based came out in 1972; the book in 1976), buPerhaps seeking to build on the success of the movie Avatar, Tor has re-released Ursula LeGuin’s Hugo-winning classic, “The Word for World Is Forest” (Tor, $11.99, 189 pages). The reason? There’s an invasion of a distant planet by humans, a planet that already holds a less-advanced civilization, at least technologically speaking.

LeGuin has said that “The Word for World Is Forest” was greatly influenced by the Vietnam War (the novella upon which it is based came out in 1972; the book in 1976), but in the 21st century, it has a much stronger ecological resonance. The concept is that homo sapiens has landed on a planet that is almost all forest, and that all the wood on Earth has disappeared due to environmental collapse. Naturally, then, humans go about extracting as much wood as possible to ship back to Earth, and basically enslave the locals in order to do so.

Though I’m a huge fan of LeGuin, I don’t think “The Word for World Is Forest” holds up as well as many of her works, especially because the villain is so clearly a stereotype and not a person, and also because we have advanced so much further down the ecological road than we had in 1976 that now she is preaching to the choir.

Usually, I heartily recommend reissues of the classics, but I’m afraid this one isn’t really worth the $11.99 – especially since it’s really a padded-out novella that only gets to 189 pages thanks to big print, wide margins and lots of space between lines....more

One of Le Guin's shortest novels is also one of her most effective. The Word for World is Forest is a telling description of the ecological and moral atrocities committed by a group of human colonists on a peaceful world covered in forest, and how their barbaric treatment of the apparently passive Athshean natives provokes a bloody uprising, leaving the natives changed forever, fallen, as it were, from their state of innocence.

One of Le Guin's shortest novels is also one of her most effective. The Word for World is Forest is a telling description of the ecological and moral atrocities committed by a group of human colonists on a peaceful world covered in forest, and how their barbaric treatment of the apparently passive Athshean natives provokes a bloody uprising, leaving the natives changed forever, fallen, as it were, from their state of innocence.

The Word for World is Forest was not quite long enough to qualify for the best novel category in the Hugo awards (which she won twice), but it won the best novella category, before appearing in stand alone book format in 1976 (it originally formed part of the famous anthology sequel, Again, Dangerous Visions).

Like much of Le Guin's work, this novel is inspired by her knowledge of anthropology. Indeed, there is little of the novel which demands a science fictional setting: the "world" could fairly easily be some remote part of Africa or New Guinea. The point of using science fiction, other than Le Guin's established reputation in the genre, is that it enables the writer to create her own background, one which emphasises the points she wishes to make. As a result, the story does sometimes seem rather one sided, but the spiritual effects on the Athsheans which result from their espousal of violence are in the end striking: by becoming as vicious as the humans, they destroy a precious part of their culture forever, knowing that this will be the outcome of their actions.

In one way, Le Guin does undermine the point she is trying to make, as far as I am concerned: she adds a feminist element. The culture of the colonists as she depicts it is extremely male-dominated; human settlements are basically logging camps filled with macho lumberjacks where the only women are prostitutes and concubines. These women have no voice in the story: they don't even have names, being referenced by their measurements; they are objects used by the men for stress relief. They do show that the men can behave bestially towards people far more like them than the Athsheans. In the end, unless her overall point is less than I think it is - unless Le Guin is saying that a culture in which women are less than equal with men is capable of terrible crimes - the women are a distraction and dilute the impact of the story.

In the author's note at the beginning of Knowledge of Angels, Jill Paton Walsh wrote: "A fiction is always, however obliquely, about the time and place in which it was written." The Word for World is Forest is not really about aliens and the future, but about us, here and now - at least, as much as the world has not changed in the last forty years. It is an attack on colonialism, both as practiced in the past and in our own time, as rich western nations grind the so-called third world in poverty and hopelessness - and it could well be intended as a warning to the complacency of the western world. It obviously exaggerates for effect, as no earthly culture has ever been as innocent as the one portrayed here. There is also an underlying criticism of science fiction in general. The theme of the colonisation of an alien planet by humans is a commonn theme in the genre, and usually the author is put firmly on the side of the plucky colonists. But, Le Guin tells the seventies SF community, that is not the only imaginable side of the story. There are often clear parallels between tales of colonisation and westerns, and Le Guin is putting the side of the American Indians.

Re-reading The Word for World is Forest, I was struck by just how much it seems to have influenced a film made almost forty years after the story was published: Avatar. The Athsheans are not hugely similar to the Naavi, but much about the setting and the ecological parts of the message are really close. I'd recommend the book to anyone who enjoyed the film.

Though others might choose The Lathe of Heaven or The Left Hand of Darkness, my choice as Le Guin's greatest work would be this compact story. Even so, it has never inspired the affection I still feel for the first of her books I ever read, the Earthsea trilogy. The Word for World is Forest is Ursula K. Le Guin writing uncompromisingly an unpalatable message for adults; it is not a novel the reader is meant to like, but one which is meant to hammer home its point. One of the most effective uses of science fiction....more

But honestly, I do wonder sometimes whether Ursula LeGuin gets tired of other people making truckloads of money from ideas that sound eerily like her own. HP was one, though albeit a very different book from the other boy-wizard from Earthsea. Consider the jacketflap information from this book:

The Athsheans. Theirs is a fragile culture, deceptively simple. Beneath their pastoral life in the abudnant forests is a complex and almost mystical understanding of tA wonderfully quick and intense read.

But honestly, I do wonder sometimes whether Ursula LeGuin gets tired of other people making truckloads of money from ideas that sound eerily like her own. HP was one, though albeit a very different book from the other boy-wizard from Earthsea. Consider the jacketflap information from this book:

The Athsheans. Theirs is a fragile culture, deceptively simple. Beneath their pastoral life in the abudnant forests is a complex and almost mystical understanding of their link in the ecological chain of their planet. And the stability of Athshe's ecology is the basis of their culture, of the continuation of the entire planet's life cycles.

(Is this starting to sound familiar to anyone?)

But the paradisiacal Athshe has not gone unnoticed in the universe. Soon the distant planet falls prey to the exploitive tentacles of colonialism. Earth-men have arrived and claimed their right to paradise...

Doesn't it make you wonder whether James Cameron may not have at some point in the mid 70s, read this book? And then forgotten all about it for 30 odd years until he made Avatar?

I suppose Ursula LeGuin can rest in the peaceful consolation that her stories are incomparable in the way that they are told, and not at all plebian or tidy - and that's what will always set her apart (besides not being half as rich!) from all the others out there. I have a favourite passage from this book:

All the colors of rust and sunset, brown-reds and pale greens, changed ceaselessly int he long leaves as the wind blew. The roots of the copper willows, thick and ridged, were moss-green down by the running water, which like the wind moved slowly with many soft eddies and seeming pauses, held back by rocks, roots, hanging and fallen leaves. No way was clear, no light unbroken, in the forest. Into wind, water, sunlight, starlight, there always entered leaf and branch, bole and root, the shadowy, the complex. Little paths ran under the branches, around the boles, over the roots; they did not go straight, but yielded to every obstacle, devious as nerves. The ground was not dry and solid but damp and rather springy, product of the collaboration of living things with the long, elaborate death of leaves and trees; and from that rich graveyard grew ninety-foot trees, and tiny mushrooms that sprouted in circles half an inch across. The smell of the air was subtle, various and sweet. The view was never long, unless looking up through the branches you caught sight of the stars. Nothing was pure, dry, arid, plain. Revelation was lacking. There was no seeing everything at once: no certainty. The colors of rust and sunset kept changing in the hanging leaves of the copper willows, and you could not say even whether the leaves of the willows were brownish-red, or reddish-green, or green.

And it's such passages that make me want to read with that childhood ferocity for reading that I once felt. ...more

So, this book was alright. In general, I've really enjoyed Le Guin's science fiction, and find it wonderfully refreshing. This book's fault wasn't the content so much as the length. If it had been longer it might've been able to go way more in depth into the story. It's the well known tale of pioneers going out and colonizing other planets, destroying native cultures along the way. It's interesting that the Hain and Cetians are also included in this story. The native culture on the planet (whichSo, this book was alright. In general, I've really enjoyed Le Guin's science fiction, and find it wonderfully refreshing. This book's fault wasn't the content so much as the length. If it had been longer it might've been able to go way more in depth into the story. It's the well known tale of pioneers going out and colonizing other planets, destroying native cultures along the way. It's interesting that the Hain and Cetians are also included in this story. The native culture on the planet (which the terrans call New Tahiti) are furry little ape creatures (though definitely sentient and intelligent) that, like the Terrans and Cetians, were apparently brought to their planet by the colonizing Hainish a long, long, long, long time ago. Anyway, their society is strongly based on the experience of lucid dreaming. Initially, this is what attracted me to the story. It was very interesting, as promised, but had the story been a bit longer, I think that more depth could have been given to it. All in all, it was a nice quick read, but at the end I felt like I didn't get enough detail....more

At times charming and at other times quite disturbing, Le Guin's tale of a planet being razed for wood to be shipped back to earth and the revolt of the native inhabitants is completely compelling. The Anthsheans are short, green, humanoid creatures who have mastered the art of dreaming and live in peacefulness with each other. By contrast, Captain Davidson, a Terran human, is a total ass. It takes a lot of talent for someone as evolved as Le Guin to write from the point of view of such a disgusAt times charming and at other times quite disturbing, Le Guin's tale of a planet being razed for wood to be shipped back to earth and the revolt of the native inhabitants is completely compelling. The Anthsheans are short, green, humanoid creatures who have mastered the art of dreaming and live in peacefulness with each other. By contrast, Captain Davidson, a Terran human, is a total ass. It takes a lot of talent for someone as evolved as Le Guin to write from the point of view of such a disgusting character. I never thought I'd find myself rooting against humans and for aliens, but in this book, one has to. It takes just as much imagination to write from the point of view of Selver, the Anthshean who leads the revolt and saves his world. I am incredibly impressed by this book and enjoyed reading it very much, as I have all of Le Guin's work I've read so far. ...more

This was my first read of Ursula K. Le Guin and I must say I enjoyed a lot this exquisite, deep novella, which makes great use of SF to deal with many different topics - anthropology, ecology, sexism, violence, delusional schizophrenia :)Interesting how all of this is still so actual.

"You cannot take things that exist in the world and try to drive them back into the dream, to hold them inside the dream with walls and pretenses. That is insanity. What is, is."

I now know my supposition that it wThis was my first read of Ursula K. Le Guin and I must say I enjoyed a lot this exquisite, deep novella, which makes great use of SF to deal with many different topics - anthropology, ecology, sexism, violence, delusional schizophrenia :)Interesting how all of this is still so actual.

"You cannot take things that exist in the world and try to drive them back into the dream, to hold them inside the dream with walls and pretenses. That is insanity. What is, is."

I now know my supposition that it was one of the inspiration sources for Avatar was justified, as I've researched the subject a little.

A pretty beautiful book in that it humanizes a truly alien culture and species while truly averting the "noble savage" trope. If anything, the "alien" species in the story is more fleshed-out and agency-driven than most of the colonizing humans, which represents a pretty nice subversion of the usual structure (as seen in "Avatar" or "Dances With Wolves," which always seem to assume that we won't fully identify with the plight of a non-human culture unless there are human characters "grounding" tA pretty beautiful book in that it humanizes a truly alien culture and species while truly averting the "noble savage" trope. If anything, the "alien" species in the story is more fleshed-out and agency-driven than most of the colonizing humans, which represents a pretty nice subversion of the usual structure (as seen in "Avatar" or "Dances With Wolves," which always seem to assume that we won't fully identify with the plight of a non-human culture unless there are human characters "grounding" things and often outperforming the natives at everything once they ally with them).

I'm really envious of the way that Le Guin manages to write the Athsheans, using words and logic which feel internally consistent but don't necessarily help you to completely understand their thought process. It's a case study both in how a nuanced and complex society can be marginalized and dehumanized by people who can't see that nuance, and the ways in which a meme (in the Dawkins sense, meaning a new idea) can spread once introduced into culture. A great deal of worldbuilding also takes place around the fringe of the story, included even if it isn't necessary to the actual narrative, where it gives a taste of a much broader and more ancient universe than what we see in the story. Yes, you'll see a fuller treatment of this basic concept in Orson Scott Card's "Speaker for the Dead," but there's a brevity and gentler sort of dignity to this narrative, much as I love that book (though maybe I'm biased because Le Guin has remained committed to humanism and Card has increasingly revealed himself as a narcissistic elitist who is astonishingly lacking in empathy for groups he isn't fond of). Give this a read; it's only 168 pages!...more

As of 2013, Ursula K. Le Guin has published twenty-two novels, eleven volumes of short stories, four collections of essays, twelve books for children, six volumes of poetry and four of translation, and has received many awards: Hugo, Nebula, National Book Award, PEN-Malamud, etc. Her recent publications include the novel Lavinia, an essay collection, Cheek by Jowl, and The Wild Girls. ForthcomingAs of 2013, Ursula K. Le Guin has published twenty-two novels, eleven volumes of short stories, four collections of essays, twelve books for children, six volumes of poetry and four of translation, and has received many awards: Hugo, Nebula, National Book Award, PEN-Malamud, etc. Her recent publications include the novel Lavinia, an essay collection, Cheek by Jowl, and The Wild Girls. Forthcoming in 2012, Finding My Elegy, New and Selected Poems. She lives in Portland, Oregon.

She is known for her treatment of gender (The Left Hand of Darkness, The Matter of Seggri), political systems (The Telling, The Dispossessed) and difference/otherness in any other form. Her interest in non-Western philosophies is reflected in works such as 'Solitude' and 'The Telling' but even more interesting are her imagined societies, often mixing traits extracted from her profound knowledge of anthropology acquired from growing up with her father, the famous anthropologist, Alfred Krober. The Hainish Cycle reflects the anthropologist's experience of immersing themselves in new strange cultures since most of their main characters and narrators (Le Guin favours the first person narration) are envoys from a humanitarian organization, the Ekumen, sent to investigate or ally themselves with the people of a different world and learn their ways....more